Soldiers of Earth
by Red Clay
Summary: The Hundred Years War still rages and those that fight it do so in spite of the Avatar's long absence. But spirits are fading. A story of nobody soldiers making their way to Fong's fortress, pursued by a plucky someone's Dim Mak master.
1. Naraka

_So I heard the J.N. Howard suite for The Last Airbender and a scene involving these four people I once created popped into my head. It was so vivid that I thought to write it out. If you read and then listen to the piece, you'll get the full effect, though I think it stands alone well enough._

_After the Youtube url paste in: watch?v=zjSctXi-0sg&annotation_id=annotation_695237&feature=iv_

_Or just search for "last airbender soundtrack james newton howard."_

_I couldn't find a way to shoehorn in any canon characters, so they're all OC's. As a result, there won't be any sort of readership for this, save for you, so thank you. Review if you feel so inclined._

_EDIT: Changed title and upped the cliffhanger quality. My first chapters are always so closed at the end because I'm used to short stories. I'm getting better though._

**I. Naraka  
**

The empty horizon shivered with heat just outside of the static village. Nothing else moved until four dots - three faded green led by a deep blue - emerged in the distant panorama and grew as they approached the deadwood buildings hung with hushed pentatonic wind chimes. Soon the dots had grown into people, slouched as they slowly marched under the beating of the summer sun. They halted just outside the tiny settlement.

Qilaq, a young man with skin like lacquered leather and the threadbare, cerulean robes of a Waterbender from the Northern Tribe, led the other three: two young women and an adolescent boy. "Anana, can I borrow your helmet?" the swarthy northerner asked of his tawny female compatriot.

She looked over after she finished adjusting the loose braid that kept her long black locks mostly untangled. "Why're you asking me?" she smiled, glancing over at her similarly armored female comrade.

"Right," Qilaq said with a slow blink. He turned to his other, pale but slightly sun kissed, female compatriot. "Nuan, can I wear Anana's helmet?"

The young woman, about as old as Qilaq, with straight black hair down to her shoulders, adjusted two saucer like crowns stacked one atop the other. "Why?" she asked as though she really didn't want to give up her double-hat status. "Your skin doesn't burn."

Qilaq sighed and threw his head back. "It may not show, but my face is sizzling on my skull like an egg on a skillet. Please. Helmet." He reached out his hand without looking and lo, a blessed green helmet of solar protection was placed in it. "Thank you!" Instant shade was marvelous, even if it was only for his face.

"Baby," Nuan teased before surveying the peaceful settlement before them. She was done the moment she opened her eyes.

There was a flattened dust road and two rows of seven or so buildings facing each other on either side. The construction was of fissuring planks of knotted oak and cedar that had bled all their color long ago to leave behind a creaking gray mass. Some of the nearly dilapidated houses had plank awnings and porches with tilted chairs sitting on them. Ghostly silhouettes peeked and slide by the shaded windows of almost every house, but no other signs of life were present.

"Think we should even ask for anything?" she wondered aloud.

The other adolescent in the group, a former farm boy with a robust tan and pronounced features, looked down at his worn green fabric and steel-woven tunic and seemed to regard his gold trimmed shoulder plates as if seeking a higher justification from them. "Well, we _are_ Earth Kingdom soldiers. I mean, it's kinda their duty to help us out."

The tiny traveling militia stepped lightly down the road, watching as shadows dodged their inquisitive glances at every obscured window.

Anana shook her head. "It doesn't look like they have the means to help themselves, much less us. Think the Fire Nation's been through here?" The question seemed to be directed at Qilaq, so he answered, sort of.

"Better question would be where the fire flingers_ haven't_ been, though I can't see them getting much out of here. Not anymore, anyway." A door opened and everyone that looked like a proper soldier jumped like a frightened puppy. Qilaq just turned to the man coming out of his home. "Excuse me, sir," he ventured, trying to be as non-threatening as possible. His cordiality was immediately quashed by the stern man who looked as though all water had dried from his russet skin weeks ago.

"We don't got nothin' for ya. No food. No nothin'."

Qilaq was still slightly defensive from being spooked. "You seem to have plenty of 'nothin','" the sun-touched northerner remarked. He immediately regretted the attack, owing it to the heat and thirst and heat and his smarmy nature and the heat.

"Heh. Ya can just take that attitude 'a yours an' walk."

"It doesn't mean anything that we're soldiers?" Lim asked with all his sincere naivety laid to bear.

The bearded man's throat rattled with something resembling laughter. "Oh, no, it means somethin'. Soldiers been through here: Kingdom and Red. And they sucked us dry. Worse than the drought." His accusing eyes seemed to identify what it was that was worse than the drought.

"We're here to help, though."

"You standin' there ain't helpin' nobody." This time, Qilaq restrained himself from making another smart remark about the double negative. "Just get gone," said the scraggly villager, throwing his finger out toward the empty plains that stretched to the distant horizon. They all glanced down the road, save for the stone faced Qilaq who was more than a little irked by the treatment he was getting. They noticed a small stone well jutting out of the middle of the road, as if to mark the border between civilization and miles of unforgiving expanse.

Anana decided to lend her tender tone to the situation. "Sir, could we at least dip into your town well? Just to fill our canteens and waterskins."

"Sure." The man rattled again. "Dip in and take whatev'r ya kin get." With that, the dried up figure slid like a paper cut out back into his derelict home.

"Don't you just love that rustic charm, Nuan?" smirked Qilaq.

"Oh, just ever so," his bubbly friend concurred, digging deep to uproot her most delightfully spiteful earthen charm.

The four of them stepped over to the well and leaned their heads over the mouth of the dark cavity. It was just big enough for all of them to get a look at once if their crowns all touched. A wall of stagnant air, as dry as sun bleached sand, hovered just below their noses. The two Earthbenders couldn't see anything past the impenetrable darkness that started a few feet down, where even light was too afraid to continue on. The Waterbenders, however, could sense the sere soiled bottom or, rather, the complete absence of moisture.

Anana's heart fell, though Qilaq's started to thump with frustration. He trained one of his darker glares on the door of the man who had dismissed them and the village by proxy, but something poked its head out that relaxed his furrowed countenance.

A girl nuzzled through the door. She could barely reach up past Qilaq's waist. Her tiny lips and hands looked so dry and withered that they didn't even look a part of her anymore, just useless ornaments. More people started coming out, as dry and lifeless as the bottom of their well. A daughter tugged on her mother's fraying shirt and asked in a whisper, "Is the water man here to bring the water back?"

Desperate men and woman and their children all locked their hopeless, sunken eyes on the four soldiers. They all turned from the desperate gazes. They were helpless. All but Qilaq.

Qilaq was never helpless. So long as life surrounded him, he had something to use, something to bend.

He placed his dark, parched hand on the arid clay dust beneath him and let the fingers of his essence branch out like cracks across a sheet of ice. The tips of his Qi, the tendrils of his soul, passed through the hash corporeal: earth and stone and clay and glass. After an eternal instant of stretching his senses beyond his physics, something beneath him, and within him, churned and he opened his cobalt eyes, an artful look drawing over his rough features.

He stood to looks of concern and confusion from his comrades. The swarthy Waterbender then dropped to the ground, right knee bent and left leg outstretched with his toe pointed toward the empty blue sky. His hands stroked the dust, the fluid motions drawing and whipping away flowing and impermanent designs.

As if struck by realization, Anana and Nuan locked eyes, while Lim scratched his short black shock of hair. The aware female soldiers hung their heads over the well and deep in the darkness there was stillness and then…

Water began to flow. The parched soil cracked and let miniscule rivulets snake out. As the streams flowed up the arid stone walls of the cavern, the soil cracked more then bulged and became damp.

An instant after breaking the ground, a cool breeze, as though from a thousand beating butterfly wings, rushed up through the tunnel and stretched itself out, filling the stagnant air with fragrance like baby-soft lightning. Anana greedily inhaled the scent and looked to Nuan, who felt something, but couldn't quite identify it.

"Don't you smell it?" Anana asked, breathless. "It's water."

The whole of the village seemed to hear those two soft words as though they were the singular knells of the very Rapture, but they couldn't believe them. They remained frozen with anticipation for cool confirmation of the promise of those two dulcet tones.

"Anana," Qilaq said as he slowly rose. "Let's make waves." Anana giddily obliged and joined her fellow Waterbender, matching his precise and gradual form exactly.

The two raised their arms and let them fall. There was a splash.

Rise, fall, splash.

Rise, fall, splash, spray.

The two benders exhaled and slowly lifted their arms. A swirling crescendo roared. Every breath held. And then…

A wave broke on the high well wall like the sea against a cliff face. Droplets soared holding full-circle rainbows within them before splashing back down into the churning cauldron of crisp liquid from the untapped veins of Mother Earth.

The world slowed with joy and all the villagers ran to gather up their jugs and buckets. A boy still innocent to the touch of the world toddled into his kitchen to retrieve the dry water jug. As he waddled out, his bedridden father lifted his head and asked where the little boy was headed. "What's all the commotion?" he asked.

The boy rewrapped his tiny hands around the jug and answered: "The water people are making water in the well. I'm going to get you some water daddy."

With that, the boy continued out the door, leaving his single parent to lay back and wonder: "Making water?"

The whole village crowded around the well, smiling and cheering, the water still sloshing back and forth at the rim of the well, spilling over with all the hands and ladles and buckets dipping into it. The four soldiers smiled, until voices began to raise. People began to shove their neighbors. Fists started flying. Some used the lengths of chained rope segments tied to their well buckets to whip or choke the nearest aggressor. The mob began to grapple with itself to reach into the well.

Nuan and Anana were immediately trying to break people up and calm them down. Lim and Qilaq followed, getting more physical and even throwing some of the rowdier rioters. One of the women brained Anana with a terracotta jug and she fell away from the mob. Lim was at her side in a blink, offering concerned comfort, but the bronze Waterbender didn't want any.

She was disgusted, almost crestfallen. It was almost worse than the vapid waterless shells they were not a minute ago.

Anana had had enough. She stood and twisted in a taught stance, wound herself up, and then threw out her arms, summoning the well water to explode and throw the fighting citizens apart. Everyone fell to the ground stunned - save for Qilaq and the stalwart Nuan - and the hundreds of gallons of frothing white-water rushed into a single scintillating blob above the well like a living mass of godly glass.

Every eye went wide with fright and awe and gazed at ferocious power of Anana, the Waterbender of the Earth Kingdom. Qilaq was quick to react after the initial shock and began to pull tiny streams from the central mass. The streams went and found their way into the mouths of the town's people's containers. Some raised their vessels, while others still stared in awe at the sight and the might woman who commanded the tremendous power of the moon and the sea.

With the violence quenched by wonderment, Anana and Qilaq succeeded in distributing the water plumbed from the depths beneath the parched well. Thanks and grateful smiles were lavished on the outsiders, though the four of them got the sense that behind every gratified pair of eyes hid unease. The soldiers made the villagers anxious and that was nothing new.

Qilaq was used to it. His dark visage and foreign blue garb was about as off-putting as his sardonic slips, though it wasn't nearly as odd as seeing Anana: a member of the Water Tribe dressed like a Kingdom soldier. All four of them felt the repellant tidal forces exerted by the people. Nuan quipped that it felt almost tectonic in its passivity, like being squeezed a hairs breadth more every day between two boulders. They did their best to ignore it.

As noon faded into evening and the fringes of the sky began to blush, the four of them chatted, encircling the well, each soldier with his or her back against the curve of the rough earthen wall, legs outstretched and helmets off.

While Qilaq stabbed tiny pits into the hard terra-firma with his calloused finger tips, Nuan busied herself with rubbing the caked-on grim of soil and dead skin from her forearm. "You know," she said, "I was inches away from stripping down and jumping in that water, before all the rioting and floating lake action."

"I would have liked to see that," quipped Qilaq with an erect eyebrow.

"I bet you would have, iceman."

"Actually," Qilaq segued, "I was inches away from melting the ice plug and sinking all that groundwater back into the aquifer." Anana was leaning against the opposite wall, facing the empty plains and hunchbacked horizon stretching westward away from the tiny village. Were it not for the chasm between them, the two Waterbenders would be back to back. He rested his head on the rim of the recently tapped watering hole. "But your way worked, too. Dramatic, but effective."

Anana pulled one of her knees up toward her chest and afforded herself a self-satisfied grin. "Sometimes drama works."

"What's an aquifer?" Lim asked of his swarthy friend from the frozen north. "Is that like a furry leopard seal?"

Qilaq smiled. "Yes, it resides deep in the hollows of the driest plains and survives by eating runoff and general unawareness." The sarcasm of the cerulean robed man was well received by his giggling female comrades. Lim just narrowed his gaze. "You don't know much about water, do you?"

"Don't need to," Lim snorted. "I ain't a Waterbender. I know dirt and rock and plants, though. Anyway, I know water wells. They dry up and that's it. You're saying there was still water down there?"

"You saw that there _was_. Not much more than a puddle left, now that the town's finished hording."

"Stocking up." Nuan corrected.

Qilaq barked a single resounding laugh. "You can still feel them watching us. They don't even want us touching the dregs." He swung an illustrative thumb over his shoulder into the damp, cavernous chamber between the four of them.

Nuan didn't look up when she said: "Well, who's to stop us _taking_ a drink?"

Lim turned and looked at the lithe young woman wide-eyed, but then concluded that she must have been joking or had emphasized wrong. They wouldn't just 'take' without asking.

Qilaq cracked a smile. He knew Nuan better than that.

Anana cleared her throat deliberately. "We could stay here for a while. Maybe help them dig another well."

"There isn't any more water around here," Qilaq chuckled, amused by the hopelessness of the entire scenario. "And this drought is going to continue. I can feel that much. No, they need to take what they can and head for greener fields."

"_Wetter_ fields," Lim corrected.

"That's the implication with the whole 'greener' thing. Anyway, _we've_ got a war to fight. We've gotta get to General Fong's fortress before summer's end."

Anana tilted her head back against the well's rim, just like Qilaq, and contemplated the low hanging country sky. "You know, I've heard Fong is…" She hesitated to tersely encapsulate the rumors about their future commanding officer. Lim felt no such reluctance.

"A few lines short of a field?" quipped the former farm boy, leaning his head back, too.

"What's with the farming analogies?" Nuan asked, joining her friends in the laid-back club.

Lim just shrugged. "They're easy."

Nuan resisted the urge to say: "You're easy." Instead, she said, "I've heard Fong's as smart as two hammers knockin' heads."

"Now that's crazy," Lim concurred.

"I've heard both of those things," Qilaq said, "but stupid-crazy can be good, especially in a fight. We can all attest to that. Well… the crazy part anyway."

"No, we've done some 'stupid-crazy' before," Nuan laughed. "Remember burying ourselves and waiting for that platoon to march over us so we could spring out and 'surprise' them?"

"Surprise is a very powerful element in combat."

"Yeah, so is fire," Anana added darkly.

"We were surrounded before the fight even started!" Lim exclaimed with an emphatic wave of his hardened boyish hands.

"Hey," Qilaq yelped in defense of his scheme. "It worked during The Siege."

The undisturbed silt of Nuan's memories kicked up and mired her normally pristine stream of consciousness. She leaned her head forward and hugged her knees to her chest. "Always gotta bring up Ba Sing Se."

"Sorry, Nuan," Qilaq said, regretting what strain his thought-out, yet thoughtless words often caused the people around him. He gathered a sunnier demeanor and looked to Lim, slapping him on the shoulder pad. "Anyway, here we are: stupid, crazy, and still alive."

"Hey! Why'd ya look at me when ya said 'stupid'?"

"I said crazy and alive, too."

"And that's supposed to make me feel better?"

"What, you aren't alive?"

"Well, yeah, but…"

Anana lowered her sapphire gaze from the cloudless sky to the far horizon and the tawny color in her cheeks emptied. "Guys. About that 'war to fight.'"

The other three soldiers recognized the signature dread resounding in her tone like a thousand distant drums pounding in unison. A couple villagers stepped out of their homes to take part in the foreboding observation. There, above the blinding curve of the horizon rose a putrid column of bulging, jet smoke. They all knew what was coming.

It was Lim who finally voiced everyone's feelings with succinct and practiced precision. "Damn."


	2. Night Light

_I always end up overdoing it. Oh well. Critique at your own risk._

_Action Epic Battle GO!_

**II. Night Light  
**

One of the gaunt village men sipped quick breaths in his apprehension.

"Fire Nation," he whispered in a feeble attempt to flood his lungs with enough air to scream. A few breaths later he finally managed to spurt, "The Fire Nation is coming! They're coming back! Fire Nation troops!" His panic was answered by shuffling, muted dashes behind walls of age-roasted planking, hissing, quiet clamor. Outside, one could almost feel the villagers taking cover in their closets and under their tables.

The stilted barker was still wailing like a broken klaxon when a woman emerged and hissed, "Will you calm down and stop rousing a panic. Now, if we just give them what they want like always, they'll leave us in peace."

"What? We just let 'em take our water? The last of our water? And what if they want more? We don't have anymore. We don't have _anything_ for them!"

"We can only give what we can and hope for the best, hope it's enough."

"You're crazy, woman, you know that?"

"If crazy is wanting to keep my house from becoming a bonfire, then I'm as crazy as a soup sandwich. Where did those soldiers disappear to?"

"The soldiers? Yeah!" the man said, hope alighting his tone. "They can protect us, or at least negotiate with the Fire… where'd they go?"

The four warriors had just passed behind the farthest house of the north row and were striding away gingerly.

"What's the plan?" Anana asked of their stalwart leader, thinking that a pincer move or a stealthy flank would be the best strategies. They walked for a while in silence without any signs of stopping or turning to horseshoe around and engage the encroaching Fire Nation troops. Anana asked again, more like a command this time.

Qilaq's orders were quick and decisive. "We leave."

Anana stopped. "No. We can't leave these people."

Qilaq stopped cold and Nuan almost face-planted in his back. He turned with a labored sigh. "Sure we can. You heard the lady. The village will give the fire-mongers whatever they want, and everyone will be just fine."

"There's nothing 'fine' about extortion. And what do you think those monsters are going to do when they realize that there's nothing left to take?"

"They'll leave, just like us."

"They're Fire Nation," Lim interjected. "They'll probably just burn the place down for fun."

Though Qilaq was a patient leader, this defiance was ferrying him across boarder into Annoyed. If he didn't keep an eye out for the signs, he'd soon find himself in the seedy capital city of Pissed. "Lim, they won't waste their energy out here and, Anana, you know the townspeople have stuff to take."

"And you're okay with the Fire Nation taking every ounce, every last drop of what they have?"

"If it means they survive, yes. If it forces that _impenetrably_ _thick-headed _town to come to its senses and leave this dustbowl, then, a million times, yes!"

Nuan spoke up. "I'm with Qilaq on this one."

A look of disapproval bordering on disgust creased Anana's civet features. "You're with Qilaq on _every _one."

"Well, yeah. You wanna make something of it?"

"I can't believe you. You're cowards. All of you."

"Oh, you _do_ wanna make something of it, dontcha, water sprite?" Nuan said, punching her palm.

"At least I have the drive to do _something._"

"I'll show you _something_!" Nuan was clumsy with verbal fencing. She couldn't win an argument with a mute, Qilaq noted to himself, allowing a grin to creep across his features.

"Stop it guys!" Lim yelled, pushing his boyish voice down as deep as possible. "We should be fighting the Fire Nation, not each other. That's our duty."

"It's also our duty to help people in need," Anana added her intense azure eyes still locked on Nuan's green and pyrite flecked orbs.

Qilaq let loose and obtrusive guffaw and all eyes locked on him, with a mix of confusion and foreboding. "Since when have been the 'spread sunshine brigade?' We're soldiers. We fight and we _kill_ those who would do the same to us."

Anana was deeply disgusted now. "Oh, so going to join up with Crazy Fong is just so we can 'kill' better?"

"That's the idea."

"What is wrong with you? The whole point of this war - our fighting - is to save people from tyranny. That's what we're trying to do, to help and protect people, people who are suffering."

"You can't force kindness. Those people, they don't want our help and even if they did, do you think they deserve it?"

"Even if they don't want what I have to give, I'll still offer it." The nobility of her diction was at its zenith and the silence from her comrades, satisfying. "Go off to your general." With that defiant punctuation, the Waterbender spun on her boot heel and stormed off through the gravel and tufts of parched weeds to meet the impending threat and save the nearby citizens of the Earth Kingdom.

"While you go off and do some _righteous_ killing, hmm?" Qilaq decried. "Or maybe you'll convince those Fire Nation troops to leave peaceably."

Anana didn't miss a step as she stomped back to the village.

"Anana! Don't!" Qilaq yelled after her. "Lim!" but he couldn't stop Lim running off either.

"Wait up, Anana," the young Earthbender called as he rushed to her side.

The two elder soldiers shook their heads in disappointment as the sun retreated, pulling the brightness and color of day after it like a crisp blanket and unveiling a dark star powdered sky.

Nuan quipped as she watched the farm boy sidle up next to the exotic girl from the land of glaciers. "Such a puppy."

"I was gonna say koala-sheep," Qilaq smirked.

"That's cute, too."

"And stupid. Don't forget stupid."

"Vapid as a rock. He's so eager to please her."

"No, I think it's worse than that. He really believes in that stuff. It's genuine chivalry."

"I still think he just wants to get in her pants."

"Who doesn't?"

Nuan slowly turned to the stalk of succinct sarcasm with an elevated brow. He returned the look in kind. She said nothing more on that subject.

"So?" the lithe Earthbender asked of her stoic friend.

"So what?" he snapped, taking one last look toward the gathering drama.

As their comrades went off to meet the Fire Nation head-on, Qilaq turned his back and Nuan, almost reluctantly, followed suit.

* * *

The squat tank was covered with dents and maimed men who were covered in bandages and splints to set bones shattered by stone projectiles. After it parked just in front of the simple masonry hole that was the village well, the able bodied men slid from the scored skin of the conveyance and slowly walked with the rest of the platoon down the main road. Several of the men cheered inwardly, having finally found, at the very least, a solid roof to sleep under for the night.

Though the final glow of dusk had evaporated, it was of little consequence to the haggard platoon of Fire Nation troops. The Firebenders, of course, made their own light, kindling blossoms of flame that hovered just above their palms. A few spear points were slathered in tar and set alight to be used as lanterns by those few not gifted with the ardent art.

Fatigued groans and the rotten stench of exhaustion clouded the air, emanating beyond the fluxing bubble firelight and into the stark atmosphere of the darkened village. There was no movement beyond them. The hanging stillness tickled each soldier with unease. When they reached the center of the town, they stilled as well. Only the flames drew breath.

Was it a ghost town? No. There were whispers, hushed hisses for silence, muffled coughs. There were people living here. It was a good sign for the weary men and, though still unnerved, the troops felt a collective relief having reached civilization, however destitute.

One of the more upright men stepped to the precipice of the light. "Ladies and Gentlemen!" he announced in as clear a tone as his sore throat would allow. "My name is Yori! I'm the lieutenant of this platoon! Please, I'm requesting shelter and any food and water you can spare for my men."

"Requesting?" one of the Firebenders snapped, his palm-torch flaring with the syllabic emphasis. "What in Agni's jerky colon are you doing?" The commander shot a hard look at his subordinate who suddenly remembered the chain of command and punctuated his question with a proper "sir."

The crimson and black platoon was treated to more vacant silence.

Yori renegotiated his terms with the stubborn town. "We'll only take what we need! I mean, we request only what is essential to our survival until we reach the next village!"

The group waited and received only the void's vacuous response.

"Please." The lieutenant was pleading now. "At the very least spare what little food and water you can and shelter our wounded for the night."

"Sir, with all due respect," said one of the pike-man dusting a fallen ember off his shoulder, "we're the bad guys here. I don't think asking nice is going to make them help us out."

"Do you hear what you're saying? 'Make them help us'? I know what you're thinking and I will not be responsible for the plunder of a civilian settlement. We're not pirates, for Agni's sake, we're soldiers."

"Yori," bellowed one of the veteran Firebenders through lips wreathed in wild brown hair. "You have to think about the men, right now."

"I am thinking about the men. I'm thinking about their integrity, their image."

The bearded Firebender scoffed as though it were a surprise sneeze.

"When this war is over," the lieutenant continued, "we're going to have to look these people in the eye. They aren't just going to go away. We're going to have to live with them. The Fire Nation will have to reach out to these citizens and pull them up from the terror that we inflicted."

"That's really forward thinking of you, sir, but frankly I'm more worried about _tonight_ than what _might_ happen in another hundred years, when we're all dead and buried."

"We'll be dead and buried in a couple _days_ if we don't get some water," said the pike-man, accompanied by a chorus of approving grunts.

"We can survive a damaged reputation, but not this," the bearded man said turning to the rest of the troops who were all nodding and rumbling with agreement. "Hate to do this to you, Yori, but a leader has to put his troops before swine, so to speak."

Cheers from the riled soldiers rose and became defined.

"We're with ya Shig!"

"Yori ain't fit to command shit!"

"I thought it was _pearls _before swine! Is that even the right usage?"

Yori was set to defend his position, both as the ranking officer and as a negotiable representative of the Fire Nation, but it would have made no difference, whatever he did. He couldn't reason with them or fight his own people to protect unseen strangers. All he could do was turn his back and hang his head in shame.

The bearded Shig slid into his new role as elected commander without hesitation. "Kou, make nice with the villagers."

An androgynous young woman with spindly arms and a short shock of black hair accepted the order with a fiendish grin. "Alright, folks. Bring out all ya got and _maybe_ I'll douse this." The blaze in her palm blinked and shrank down into a luminous, quivering tangerine of energy before she threw it at the house on the far corner of the south row. The ball burst on the awning and splashed lambent juices all over the face of the structure. A devilish shriek and wave from the bender stoked the fiery puddles into a single brilliant mass of orange light. Muffled shrieks from within the house answered the vivacious Firebender's call.

Foot falls on floorboards. The sloshing of water in jars. A clamor of phantasmal gathering. Doors cracked open and jugs slid out. The braver denizens of the town stumbled from their homes with the last of their water clutched to their breasts. Perhaps it wasn't bravery that compelled them to hang on to the last of what they had.

As the troops fanned out to take the reluctant offerings, there was a rush, a ripple and like translucent liquid linen, a sheet of water rose out of the darkness over the burning building and smothered it, the dying hiss followed by dumbfounded quiet.

"Where did you get that water?" Lim asked Anana. "I thought your pouch was empty."

"I took some while we were doling it out, alright. We needed it."

Every Fire Nation eye locked on the two obviously Earth Kingdom soldiers.

"I think we might need a little more," Lim swallowed. He looked over his shoulder at the crawler. It hadn't stirred yet, but the wounded on it lifted their heads to the commotion.

Anana put up her hands and called to the rapt throng of armored men. "You can still just leave. We don't have to fight."

In the heart of the town, Yori's ears perked up, but before he could speak up the spindly Kou leaned back into a cackle. "Oh no, girly. You putting our fires out and rocking the Kingdom colors. No, we got ta fight and you got ta burn!"

Like leering wolf-bats, the Firebenders closed on Lim and Anana. The duo steeled themselves. Anana's mind raced. She needed water. The well! There was some muddy liquid left in the bottom. It was far, but, with as subtle a motion as she could manage, she pulled at the pool beneath her feet. The sizzle of rushing water filled the air until a splash of fluid burst from the mouth of the spring and spun into a swirling ring. Anana recalled a tactic Qilaq had mentioned for engaging a large group of foes. The torrent burst, spraying a storm of icicles at the Fire Nation troops. It wasn't a dense spread, but it made all the troops duck or block with scarves of flame. Some of them were even struck.

The result was a moment where the handheld fires dissipated and all but the torches burned. Only a few points remained visible, like heavily inked watercolor portraits of scared men hanging in the black. Before the Firebenders regrouped, Lim felt the tank shudder to life. It turned to face him and Anana and a hatch gaped open at its front.

As an effulgent orange stream spewed from its maw, Anana dodged and Lim shot up into the air, lifting beneath his feet a column of earth that broke the flame. A second later he jumped back and kicked the tip of the pillar down, sealing the flaming hole with a block of stone.

"_Bamf! _Stick a rock in it, tank!" he cheered as he crashed back into a low stance on the ground. The Waterbender behind him was fighting hand to hand, repelling armed men as best she could. The tank shivered and smoke spewed from its back as it lurched toward Lim, who had learned from Nuan how to deal with "plugged crawlers." It didn't take much: a low plateau raised just under the belly of the steel juggernaut left its voracious treads to spin uselessly like the legs a levitating turtle, waggling desperately for purchase.

Anana screamed Lim's name and the Earthbender turned to see a line of Firebenders - the wide-smiling Kuo at the center - poised to burn her to ash. He couldn't turn in time.

The unison motion seemed arduously slow and the waterless Waterbender could only cover her face and let the brightness bear down on her.

But, at the last instant, a wall of rock shot up in front of Anana and the flames broke harmlessly on the sturdy sandstone.

Lim almost did a double take. "That wasn't me."

Kuo spun around and saw another young woman in Earth Kingdom armor whose hands and forearms were covered in a thick layer of terracotta rock.

An onlooker who had been too awe struck to go into her house felt the water in her jug foam before it burst out and flew off to the edge of the darkness between two houses, where emerged a cerulean blur. The vocal pike-man swung down his flaming spear only to notice that the tip had been clipped before a jet of water poured into his face with oceanic strength. Nuan knocked the helmet off of a suit of armor with a ferocious punch of her earthen gauntlet.

Acting commander Shig rallied a line of troops in front of him and screamed at them to attack the two new assailants but as the flames emerged from their knuckles, Qilaq flung a lash of water that doused the birthing jets. Almost simultaneously, Nuan swiped her stone encrusted arms at the line and the spray of razor edged gravel punctured everything in its path.

Shig drew his jian and stepped over the fallen wall of men. Nuan tossed her saucer-like helmet aside and charged a shrieking Kuo who was flying at the Earthbender, fists ablaze. Qilaq spun and tried to draw water from another jug, but the villager holding it capped the vessel with their hand and rushed into their home. The Waterbender growled and turned back to face his opponent in the dim glow of swinging torches.

Commander Shig, despite his bulky build, stalked Qilaq with catlike grace, blade tip trained on the defenseless Waterbender. He lunged first to test the swordsman, who answered with a feign and a quick jab that Qilaq swatted away with his leathery palm. Shig smiled, foreseeing victory in a couple moves. He stepped forward and thrust at his opponents heart, but instead of falling back, like the newly minted commander had anticipated, the northerner stepped into the attack parried down with his right forearm and swatting the blade tip away allowing it to glance past his gut. One move later, Qilaq's injured arm was up and his iron-hard fingers were stabbed in his opponent's neck. The sword clattered to the ground.

While Qilaq was fencing with the commander, Nuan was grappling with the feral Kuo. Her talons burning, she took one high and wide swipe at Nuan. The Earthbender blocked the blow by clashing her forearm with the Firebender's. A flaming uppercut followed with the other hand and Nuan just barely stopped the blow short of full, explosive contact with her stomach. The heat burned through her flimsy fabric armor and she staggered, but Kuo grabbed her opponent's wrist and burned. To the Firebender's satisfaction, Nuan yelped, but was quick to wipe the searing grip from her forearm with the blade of her palm while kicking a pinnacle of rock up into her opponent's shin. Kuo yelped but went with it and shifted her weight and, with her bruised leg stretched out behind her, she leaned into a straight right punch aimed at Nuan's head. Nuan dodged slightly to her right, allowing the blow to pass, and scissored Kuo's forearm between her palms. The bone snapped and before the Fire Nation soldier could scream in pain, her opponent swung an adamantine backhand down, snapping her collarbone. Kuo fell forward, choked with agony and, as she fell, Nuan's knee met her cheek and shattered it. When the Firebender hit the ground, the lithe yet stolid Earth Kingdom soldier brought her bare foot down on her foe. There was one final crack and then nothing.

Lim and Anana had beaten the other soldiers, Anana catching on that she could siphon water out of the half-empty jugs that littered the porches. There was still one more Fire Nation soldier left. Yori struggled desperately to reason with the foreigner, but negotiations weren't progressing; Qilaq had him in a headlock.

At that moment, a tiny boy came wobbling out of a door with a bucket of water, which he clumsily tossed out into the road. He then stood there and surveyed the darkened aftermath. Dark humps were strewn all over, but what drew his attention was the dark thing dressed in blue, strangling a fear blanched man in black and red armor.

"Qilaq!" Anana screamed, rushing to the scene. "Qilaq, stop! Stop!" Qilaq wasn't about to 'stop' so she lashed a water whip around his waist and jerked him back, causing him to lose his hold on Yori's neck. He almost struck Anana, but was in just enough pain to hesitate and reconsider.

It had finally dawned on the boy what all the dark bumps were. "Why is everyone lying down? Ah!" he screamed as the lieutenant scrambled over on his hands and knees and grabbed the boy's ankle.

In a fit of mortal terror he stuttered. "I'll kill the bo_YURk_!" was all the frightened man could manage before a solid stream of water wrapped around his throat. Anana used the robust tentacle of soiled liquid to yank the man from the boy and send him skidding across the dusty plaza.

"Lim," the tawny Waterbender said, her tone rank with revulsion, "deal with him."

Lim happily obliged, striding over to the Fire Nation soldier who was still reeling from being thrown down the road.

"Come 'ere, sparky. Ya want water, huh? Well, we've got a well right over here? Why don't ya go an' take a drink?"

"Lim, wait!" but Anana's scream for restraint was too late. As Yori dropped headfirst down the empty village well, his scream diminished and then abruptly stopped.

"Way to make a scene, genius," rebuked Nuan who walked over rubbing her charred midriff.

"What, like we didn't already?" retorted the blood dotted Lim, though it was hard to make out the splatter in the starlight.

"Not with kids watching!"

"Well… uh…" Villagers, young and old, were starting to emerge from their houses as Lim tried to salvage his position. "Look, they're gonna see it anyway. Might as well teach 'em young."

"Wow, Lim," said Nuan, aghast. "That was the most heartless thing I've ever heard come out of your mouth. I guess you aren't the puppy I thought you were."

"Well, I learned from the best," he snipped, pointing squarely at the blue smudge standing down the street.

"Don't you dare point your skinny little finger at him! You wanna kill like a man? Well then, take responsibility for your own… darn actions!"

"It's fine, Nuan," Qilaq called while he sat on the ground clutching his slit arm. "It's done. We're still stupid-crazy alive." He waved the spilt water from the boy's bucket over to him and pressed it into his deep cut as a radiant, cooling gel. "Anana?"

"It's okay, sweetie," the raven haired woman cooed as she took the young boys hands in her own. "Just go on inside. Those men aren't going to hurt you now."

The child furrowed up a concerned look. "But they're not getting up. Are they dead? Did you kill them?"

The candid question stabbed into Anana's heart like a spear point. Before she could recover from the shock, a man came hobbling through the doorway of the boy's home. "You get away from my boy! Get your bloody hands off him!"

"Daddy, go lay down. It's bad for you to stand up."

Anana finally regained her wits enough to stutter a response to the thin man who was struggling to stay upright. "He… he's safe now."

"Safe my dying legs. Go inside boy." After the child darted back into the house, the man continued with a ferocious tone. "Is this what you call _safe_? Everywhere you go it's slaughter and death. Nothing good ever comes of you soldiers stomping through, takin' and never givin' back. You're just as bad as the Fire Nation. You get outta here, and then we'll be safe."

Anana, Lim, and Nuan felt their hearts sink, but Qilaq's was frozen to the sticking place.

"You ungrateful _wastes of skin and breath_!" the swarthy soldier roared, captivating every soul present. "You're right! We should've got out of here. Isn't that what I said, Nuan?" His friend nodded. The pain of seeing her best friend so upset was starting to tear up her eyes. "Well, don't worry. We're finished helping you. Go on and help yourselves. I'm sure you'll do a great job. Oh, and by the way, those injured men over on the crawler, they're still alive and now they're your problem."

At that, Qilaq left his words to hang in the air and stomped off toward the lightless horizon, his comrades in tow, hurdling bodies until they were out of the town.

They marched through the night. It wasn't until the village was completely out of view that anybody ventured to say anything. Qilaq felt it best to try and lift his crew's spirits.

"I told you guys surprise is a powerful element." They didn't laugh, but the tense air that hung around them dispelled.

"At least… we tried," Anana balked.

"Tried?" Lim started. "We saved them."

"No, Lim," Qilaq sighed. "They're still screwed."

"But, we did give 'em one more day."

"One more sunrise. Sure."

Silence.

"I've got some water in my pouch," Anana chirped as sunny as she could manage, which was about the first signs of dawn. "I fought with it, so it's a little gross, but at least it's something."

Nuan smiled and embraced her friend from the frozen north while they walked. Lim turned to Qilaq who didn't return a warm look, but he hugged his dark friend anyway.

"Ah! My arm is tender, Lim."

"Since when?"

"Since it got cut."

"You healed it."

"It's still tender, dammit. Get off." Lim maintained his grasp and, despite his protest, Qilaq didn't try to shuffle him off.


	3. The Summer Hill Night

_Ever wonder what Ty Lee's master might be/may have been like. Me too._**  
**

**III. The Summer Hill Night**

As the rising sun peeked between the cleavage of two shallow summits it tore the thin smog sheet off the sleeping river valley. Life petulantly refused to rouse. Birds ruffled their feathers and shut their beady eyes tighter to keep out the light, pale pink blooms remained curled, and all the villagers and occupying soldiers rolled over to put the new light at their backs.

But, like a stern mother, the persistent sun glared at her snoozing children, intensifying her aura and looming higher until she could be ignored no longer and everything groggily woke and wiped the sand from its eyes and went about flattening its bed-head.

A shrinking river ran behind earthen homes, its banks made sheer by the drought. Still, greenery was plentiful, if a bit crispy, and a phalanx of robust corn stalks managed to proliferate all the way up the foot of the eternally slumbering Qi Hu peak.

The first one to venture out into the sun was a petite little thing, brown locks already woven into a single braid, small tan fingers squeezing the sun like a grape, brown eyes squinting and then turned up the road plowed with ruts from the constant back and forth of ostrichorse drawn carts heavy with baskets of gnarly potatoes and golden corn. There was no more rubble, all the divots had been replaced, and all the palings and walls of stone were cleared away. The nubile eyes squinted again and saw movement up the road. Apparently she wasn't the first one to venture out into the morning light.

Red dots scouring the hill like methodical fire ants. The little mind behind the eyes tries hard to recount the events that burned the high flank of the hill black and left nothing but ash. It made her sad to see the hill scarred, the plants dead, and all her friends and their parents and her parents afraid, dreading that it might all happen again, that the story might come alive once more, like the night when the mountain was red with flame.

* * *

A man of moderate years adjusted his respectable crimson sash and walked through the sloped cornfield with utter disregard for what burgeoning sprouts may be crushed under foot. There was no use treading lightly through a burnt field, flecks of ash still sprinkled about days after the fact.

"What is this?" he thrummed, startling his adjutant's replacement and causing the younger man to uncomfortably pinch off his yawn.

"Burnt crops, sir?" he answered thoughtlessly.

"Obviously, corporal," the older man grumbled. "I mean, who did it?" The week was shaping up to be rather bothersome. His lieutenant and himself had recently been promoted and separated to command different detachments. As a result he had lost a good friend and an even better adjutant. What's worse is that the vacancy was filled by his lieutenant's pupil, who couldn't have been greener if he were made of cabbage.

Now this.

The commander's triangular gaze fell on the distant village nestled in the crook of the valley, its main road climbing straight up the foot of the mountain. Upon their arrival the night before, a portion of his force was sent patrolling the periphery, though the bulk of them were tasked with keeping the natives friendly. It had been a sleepless night for all. From where he was now, he could just barely make out the sentinel force scattered among the cluster of blocky homes, some freshly erected by Earthbenders. The indigenous population started to stir and scuttle from their stone dwellings to examine the commotion.

He tugged at his sash again, as though getting a feel for something new, something foreign. Those Earth Kingdom serfs/vassals. They looked like insects from any distance.

The corporal got anxious in the sizzling presence of his commanding officer, so he ventured to answer the hanging question with hearsay. "I heard there was a lot of commotion coming through. The troops stationed here were driven out by some Kingdom militiamen. One day the guys were collecting from the locals then, boom, rocks and rivers flying everywhere."

"They had Waterbenders?" the commander inquired, surprised that his young aide had such pertinent information after only a few hours in town. Perhaps he wasn't so disposable.

"Yeah. Lucky for most of our guys, it was just another case of 'reclamation,' but Colonel Inuzu wasn't having it. He came back with a vengeance and torched all the dirt slingers and all the water slingers before he moved out.

"I'd do the same. It is a strategically advantageous position: the only bridge for miles that could support our tanks and heavy transports crossing to the river's east bank. Purging the resistance makes sense, but why burn the crops?"

"Teach the locals some manners?"

A new, elegant male voice manifested, along with its stealthy source. "But the Fire Nation needs those surpluses from the locals to feed its troops. Fuel the war machine, but with corn instead of coal." He was a clean cut man of diminutive stature with grey eyes and loose black robes trimmed in dark gold. There was also something less tangible, an invisible aura that breathed from him like a meadow breeze in the shine of dawn. The presence quickly calmed the startled corporal.

The commander hated the chill feel of it, like the first fall air after a glorious summer. "I assume you have developed a theory about this, Makoto."

The new man smiled as if to warm the cold salutation. "I'm not much of a postulator. I have been talking with the locals. They said that they burned their own crops. If you look, you see signs of a controlled burn, though it did get a little out of control in the end. Aheh. Well, that's not the work of a Firebender. They did it so there'd be no surplus for the Fire Nation to take: just enough for them to live off of."

This was news to the corporal, who was scratching his head as if to rake the loose logic into an orderly pile. "Clever sons of-"

"There's nothing clever about it," the commander cut off his underling. "We're still taking our share of the harvest. They should have anticipated as much. So, Makoto, have your powers of persuasion drawn out any other information from the townsfolk?"

"Not more than that tidbit, though I could have guessed as much on my own. It's been happening in a lot of farming villages, recently."

"I suppose they aren't that clever," the corporal added uselessly. "Just more sheepigs."

Makoto scanned the semi-verdant panorama of tree and hill and flowing water, doing his best to ignore the charred land beneath his feet. "So, Commander Tatzu, should I go about and… gather more intel?"

* * *

Down in the village, a woman hurriedly shuffled back from the riverbank with a large jar of fresh water balanced on her head. She lightly gripped it so that she could move a bit faster and get back inside quicker. Freshly filled potholes tripped her up, but she continued on. Only a few more feet and she'd be in her door.

A Fire Nation soldier stepped around the corner of her house and she stopped cold, a bit of water splashing from the top of the jug and onto the parched soil. The grizzled Firebender leered at her, focusing on her quivering green pupils, daring her to take another step.

"I'm thirsty, girl. Give me some of that."

The woman reacted without hesitation and set the jug down, splashing a bit more water in her haste.

"Wasting water when everywhere else there's a drought," the Firebender said. "Just because you live next to a river, you think you can just splash water like it's no big deal?"

Her breathing was becoming more labored. She couldn't raise her gaze again to meet the Firebender's. She didn't want to get burned. Not like the others. Not burned. Not on her doorstep. Please, no. _Not burned._

"Go get me a cup," the soldier snapped.

She was a blur of motion and behind her shut door in half a blink. The Firebender reached into the mouth of the jar with his hands and cupped some water in them, splashing his face with it, slurping it, swishing it around in his mouth and spitting onto the wall of the house.

Makoto had stood and watched the event with mild disapproval. He smiled though when he felt a smaller presence sidle up to him. The girl with the long brown braid tremulously looked up at Makoto, who kept his eye on the Firebender down the street. But the girl knew he knew that she was there, and he knew she knew it. She followed the example of the strange man among strange men, and continued to watch nervously.

It was a short lived silence as the girl finally stammered, "S-Sir?"

Makoto grinned. "Oh, you don't have to call me 'sir,' deary. I'm not a commander of anything."

"Yes, but you're older."

"I'm not _that_ old," he said defensively, looking warmly upon the child.

"And you're from the Fire Nation," she said meeting his gaze. She had stopped shaking. "It's very important to be polite to anyone from the Fire Nation."

"Well, that is very smart of you, but in this case, 'Makoto' will be much better than 'sir'."

Motion. The two looked back at the scene.

The door opened and a man stepped out. He wasn't terribly imposing but he had a stern look in his eye. The Firebender drew himself up as well and the water on his face steamed off. A wooden cup was clenched in the villager's hand. Without breaking eye contact, he lifted the cup to the crimson armored soldier.

Smack!

The Firebender swatted the cup away and every person in the village, soldier and civilian, dropped the pretense of obliviousness and stared at the scene with bated breath. They all seemed miles away and right in the middle of the silent standoff.

The girl cooed with fright and, with suppressed distress, turned to the man next to her. "Mr. Makoto, I don't want to see it again. Could you tell him to stop, please?"

Makoto didn't need anymore prompting than that. He was walking at the word 'could'.

The soldier growled at the stalwart villager, who was beginning to tremble. "You know what, buddy? I get that same look every village I go through from every one of you Kingdom slugs and you know what else? You're ugly face is the one that finally burned me out. So how about I burn you out!"

Heat quaked the air around his hand, but before it burst into flame, Makoto jabbed the soldier's back. Three fingers. Two knuckles. Fist and twist. Three successive blows flew so fast that the slight man's right forearm, for the briefest of instants, was three. The soldier couldn't move but he didn't fall. He just stood stock still, his arms limp at his sides. Makoto, with a nod and a smile to the saved local, ushered the stiffened soldier away to a couple other Fire Nation troops who were watching. Before they carried their paralyzed comrade away, the little girl saw the stranger whisper something to his victim. With that, the troops shuffled away and Makoto came back to the girl.

"There, now," he said. "Fast and painless."

"Thank you," she said with tentative gratitude. Something told her that Mr. Makoto may want something in return. That's usually how it works. She knew that much of adults.

"You are most welcome and I'm sure he is, too, even if he's too scared to say it to my face." Makoto looked back at the doorstep where the conflict nearly erupted. The man was gone back in his house and so was the jug of water. "You're not scared of me though, are you, miss?…"

"Should I be?" the girl asked innocuously.

Makoto couldn't completely contain his laughter. "Well, should or not, you aren't, which is admirable. Now, you said you 'don't want to see it again.' Tell me dear, what happened here? What did you see?"

She knew that the man would want something, though she wasn't unhappy about his terms. In fact she obliged him to the best of her ability. "Well, it was hot when they came: the Fire Nation. It's always hot when they come."

"Yes, I should think so," Makoto laughed sitting down in front of the girl to be at eye level with her. He sat just like the other soldier had a week ago.

"But it was normal. Every few months, they'd come to take some of the harvest away. Most of us talked bad about them when they weren't around. We called them "red wyrms" and "monsters" and talked about not giving them anything, just running them out of town next time they came, but we never did. We've always done what the Fire Nation tells us. It never changed, until the day the Earth Kingdom soldiers came. Earthbenders, men and women in green and gold and Waterbenders, too. When the Fire Nation came that time, there was a lot of fighting and noise. The road turned into a dragon that fell like an avalanche and the river turned into one, too, and fell like… a big wave. It washed the Fire Nation out of our village and everyone was cheering and dancing. I was so happy. Everyone was.

"Then, some of the soldier men and women started talking to my dad and the other dads. A few nights later, the mountain was on fire. It was far away, at the top of the fields. My dad, lots of other dads, and some Waterbenders and Earthbenders were setting long fires that moved like snakes sneaking down the hill. Then the fires got bigger and made the night orange instead of silver like it is under the stars. Shadows danced and so did some people. We were getting back at them. Getting back at the Fire Nation.

"Then _they_ ran into town, scared and tired with soot smeared on them. Two of them wore Earth Kingdom armor and one of them was dressed in blue. He looked black and scary in the night. The light from the burning mountainside didn't seem to touch his face, and that made his eyes too blue and... pointy. He asked what was happening and I told him. I could see them all relax a bit, and then he told me to go get some adults. I ran as fast as I could. I don't know why I ran so hard. It just felt important. My dad was up the hill, so I got my mom and uncle, instead. They came as fast as they could and brought three Earthbenders and a Waterbender from the first group of soldiers that came to town.

"The black Waterbender said that a lot of Fire Nation troops were coming and he said we should run away. But no one runs away from their home. That's what my mom told him. So instead, he told the Earthbenders to follow his two friends far out of town and make 'dragon's teeth' so that the tanks would have to stop. His friends said they didn't have time to make strong ones, but he told them to go anyway. He had the other Waterbender go to the riverside and 'rain on the road' when the Fire Nation came.

"My mom went to warn everyone in the village and tell the people on the hill that the Fire Nation was coming back. I stayed with the dark Waterbender. He sat down in the road, right over there and asked me…" the little girl smiled. "He asked me what was fun to do around here. I told him about the screaming contests with screemadees, and racing bad potatoes down the river, and I told him I like to tell stories. We talked and I felt safe.

"Then there were loud crashes out in the dark and flashes of light like burping candles. The black Waterbender stood up and then told me to go inside and hide. I did and it was very quiet for a while, then there was yelling and the sound of falling water and cracking ground. Swirling echoes of screaming and fire. More screaming like more people were coming. My mom ran into the house and we hid for a while, but then I got up and went to the window.

"Before my mom could pull me away, I saw the black Waterbender and his friends running up the street, toward the mountain. He was dragging a brown lady in green and gold armor. She was crying and struggling like she didn't want to leave.

"We hid again in mom and dad's room, then The Fire Nation men…" The young orator squeezed her braid in her dainty hands and sniffed and let out a hauntingly sorrowful peep. It seemed too complex a thing come out of something so young. She continued, "…pulled everyone out of their homes, then they piled all the dead in the middle of the street and their leader yelled, 'All you human stains watch and smell what happens when you defy the Fire Nation.' Then he burned them. M-my da… he… it smelled like coo-."

"That's fine," Makoto allayed. "I understand. I know what it smells like." He shifted a bit in the dirt and squinted at the girl in a playfully curious way. Something about her quivering lower lip as she pouted. "You remind me of a pupil I once had."

"Really?" she said, wiping the water from her eyes and doing her best to wipe the melancholy from her face. She asked sheepishly, "Um… what's a 'pupil'?"

The pleasant Fire Nation man chuckled, "Hehha! It's someone learning something. In this case, learning something from me. She had lots of siblings, too, lots of sisters, but she was special."

"Why?"

"Because, well, she knew she was special. She knew it deep down, but she wasn't really letting herself know it. The first thing she asked me was, 'Can you teach me to be special?' And I said, 'No, because you already are. I can't teach you what you already know.' But, she was astonishingly persistent. Always pink as pixie dust, that child. I didn't teach her much more than how to fight, but that was enough to help her realize her self. At least, I think it was. I hope it was."

"I don't want to learn how to fight, though. I wanna tell stories."

"You are a wonderful storyteller," Makoto smiled.

The girl blushed. "Thanks. The black Waterbender said so, too. He said to practice and watch and tell as many stories as I could, but I should always keep one story a secret."

"Odd? Why do you think he said that?"

"He told me. He said that the story you never tell is the story that people remember the best and it's what keeps people interested in the stories you _do_ tell."

"Interesting. Well, go on and tell your stories some more, but be careful who you tell them to. They may get you in trouble."

"He told me that, too. He said, 'Tell everyone and if they don't like it, tell them again.'"

Makoto shook his head and laughed as he uncoiled his legs and rose to his feet.

"Thank you, Mr. Makoto, for listening and being so nice."

"It was my pleasure. Thank you for the story."

With that, the nameless child darted off down the road.

"She's going to be trouble," Makoto mumbled as he watched her go. Then he smiled and the sun seemed to glow brighter on his shoulders. "Good for her. I wonder what she _didn't_ tell me."

Now he knew more explicitly who burned the fields and made those dense mounds like squat pyramids just outside of town and why the locals seemed so shaken. He strolled around the rest of the village aimlessly for a while before heading back up the hill. On his way to relay his findings to Commander Tatzu, he crossed paths with the young man he had curtly convinced to come away from harming any blameless innocents in the village. The soldier was shuffling along like his joints were full of tar while the Commander's new personal underling walked within catching distance of the recently benumbed militant. He tensed at his assaulter's approach.

"Up and about, I see," Makoto addressed his victim cheerily. "Speedy recovery. Strong spine in you. Good nerves. Getting along with the locals?"

The young soldier gave Makoto a wide berth as he sidled around to make his way back to the town. He politely quavered, "Y-Yeah. They ain't so bad."

"No they are not. Heh, keep killin' 'em with kindness. It works."

"Uh, the commander wants to see you, sir," said the corporal.

"I was just on my way up. Oh, and don't call me 'sir'."

"Yes, s… uh… M-Master Makoto," the young aide exuberantly piped triumphantly having recalled the extra-military operative's proper title. There was a slight roll in Makoto's smiling gaze, but he accepted his honorific with a shallow bow and continued on up the gradual hill, to the relief of the half-paralyzed young soldier.

The commander was still fiddling with his blood-satin sash when Makoto came up with his precise hands clasped comfortably behind his back. But something else: a faint slouch hung over his shoulders like a sopping sheet. Though mild to the casual viewer, it was a jarring enough contrast in the man's typical mood that Tatzu noticed it at a glance. Perhaps these Earth Kingdom villages had begun to weary him. Good. Finally, that hopeful romantic is developing a sense of reason.

Before the smaller man could open his mouth to report his findings, Tatzu spoke. "Makoto, I have a mission for you. I assume you have no objections."

Though slightly taken aback by the brusk statement, the warrant officer was not the least bit surprised. "No, though I would prefer a little more information."

"Do you know much about Waterbenders?" A shared glint flashed in the eyes of the two men.

"I know enough. There aren't many of them left, but the few that have survived are quite fierce… or fortunate, as the case may be."

"Have you ever fought one?"

"Several." Makoto absently scratched where neck met shoulder. A faded patch of skin peeked over his gold-trimmed collar: a cold burn turned pale memory. "Sometimes a few at once, though in grander skirmishes. Nothing on the order of a duel."

"They give Firebenders a lot of trouble. They give the Fire Nation a lot of trouble. Did you know thanks to them, somewhere on the order of two-thirds of the enemy soldiers we wound come back at us within the space of a few days? It varies based on the pains we inflict, but sometimes they're fighting us the very next day."

The shadows obscuring Tatzu's point were beginning to fade away as he obliquely fanned the flames of enlightenment. Makoto continued uttering common truths to draw out his prescribed purpose. "There are some skilled healers on the side of the Earth Kingdom."

"Yes." That single word focused all the vagaries of his militant fellow countryman.

"So, I'm to assassinate some healers, then?"

"One. But this savage's healing is not what has earned him such selective attention."

"Oh? What then?" Perhaps Makoto didn't understand.

"I'm sure, having fought them, you're well aware of what the full moon does to the water savages."

"They're lunar sympathetic: stronger the brighter the moon shines."

"And a select few wield a _singular_ power: a very threatening force against the Fire Nation. If used intelligently, it could mar our forces, shatter everything we've worked to erect and uphold these past hundred years. It could even destroy us at home."

Now Makoto understood. The ocean of Fire Nation troops, flowing over the Earth Kingdom like a rouge rogue wave, could be ebbed. Precision was something of a specialty for the small martial artist, and something about the focused elegance of such a game-changing taboo appealed to him. He admired it, but, for his nation, he would see that no one on the brink of exercising such an irresistible talent would live to use it. "I understand. I don't plan on fighting them in the moonlight, anyway. Aheh."

"See that you don't," Tatzu warned. "Your quarry was reported here less than a week ago with a small escort and was likely the rabble rouser. A hawk just came in with a report. An infantry platoon in that direction hasn't checked in. They likely met with our _particular trouble_. It may also explain where Colonel Inuzu and his outfit have run off to. He's a shade darker than most Waterbenders, so he shouldn't be hard to identify."

"I've heard." Makoto smiled to himself.

The commander glanced over his shoulder toward his minion, unsure what specific meaning those last two words carried. Whatever it was, it was inconsequential as far as Tatzu was concerned. He returned his vacant gaze to the scorched earth. He then asked, "Support?"

"For me? No. If I need any, I'll gather it on my own. I'm congenial like that."

"Yes," said the commander as serious as a cliff face. "Rendezvous with the battalion on the western front by the end of next month. I expect good news."

"As do I," the henchmen replied, but as he strode further up the road to commence his hunt, the newly minted officer turned to face the martial artist.

"Oh, and Makoto, if you ever paralyze one of my troops again, I'll see to it you suffer a similar condition, though decidedly more permanent."

Makoto grinned. "Yes, Commander Tatzu."


End file.
